In a past life, when I had more free time, I liked to draw. These are three pictures that I’ve drawn and really like. They’re not perfect, but I am proud of them and I thought I’d share them.

I have other pictures that I’ve drawn but I’m sad to say I don’t have them with me in South Carolina at the moment. Once I get my hands on my portfolio again I will try and post them. Meanwhile, they’re still safely stored away in Ohio.

These three in particular are framed and hanging in my hallway. I had to take them out of the frames to photograph and I’m not terribly good at taking pictures. Also, the drawings are really reflective so I had to take pictures without the flash. So the photos are not the highest quality.

That being said, the first one I want to talk about is the “oldest” one. When I was still in high school, I drew a quick sketch of Yoda but never did anything with it. It was just a fast outline and it ended up getting stowed away for future use. When I got to college, I was given a project with the theme “duality”. I’ve always liked Star Wars and I thought Darth Maul looked cool as far as villains go, so I dusted off my Episode I Yoda sketch and found a use for it.

You can see the final version here. My professor hated it, of course. She told me it was too much like a comic book and not “real art”. That may be, but I bet you can make a lot more money off comic book drawings than anything she ever did.

The drawing in the middle was also made for a project in college. I can’t remember exactly what the topic was, but I know it involved something with colors. One of my favorite artists/illustrators is Mary Grandpre’. She’s probably best known for her illustrations for U.S. versions of the Harry Potter books. My Harry Potter drawing was meant to have a much more detailed background, but I simply ran out of time. I only had a week to complete the drawing and it took longer than I expected to blend all the colors in Harry. I still like this picture a lot, though.

Here’s a larger view. This was my first successful “experiment” with Prismacolor pencils. I really like them a lot because you can blend colors so easily. Once again, my professor (a different one) hated it. “Illustration is not art” says they. “Illustration is some of the best art,” says I.

Last but not least, a picture of Anakin and company from Episode II. This is just something I did in one night in my mom’s basement. Like Yoda, it’s graphite pencil on bristol board. None of my professors had the chance to hate this one because they never saw it. Here is the Anakin portrait.

My all time favorite artist is James Gurney (Ironically enough, one of my most hated artists is Thomas Kinkade, Gurney’s roommate in college.) I have an autographed poster hanging above my couch. His oil paintings for his Dinotopia books are simply amazing.

I also enjoy Mary Grandpre’ (The Harry Potter books) and Drew Struzan (Lots of movie posters, especially for Star Wars).

Perhaps, once I get out of the Navy, I can return to something that offers a little more creativity. Until then, hi ho, hi ho…

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 3rd, 2005 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Art, Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.